On Feb 7th, the RUSD Board of Education’s Legislative Committee held an unprecedented meeting with the trustees of the surrounding suburban villages. The intent of this meeting, I believe, was to establish some kind of ongoing dialogue with the leaders of our community. I believe this was a good first step, however, I think the mayor and the county executive should have been there, too.
The meeting was not confrontational as many had predicted it would be; it was a “warm and fuzzy” love-fest of epic proportions. At the end of the meeting, many village leaders asked “Where do we go from here?” The RUSD Legislative Committee promised that they would meet, break down the area of concerns (safety, student engagement, busing, etc), and get back to the village leaders with more concrete plans to address the concerns. I assumed (don’t ever assume anything!) that this would be done in a timely manner.
On March 26th, the Legislative Committee is finally meeting to discuss this initial meeting – 47 days later – nothing like addressing the problem head-on! At this point, do they even remember what was said at the meeting?
I have come to expect nothing less from any elected official – I think this is simply another political shell game that masquerades as “progress”. I hope I am wrong, our schools are in need of change and it will take all the stakeholders in this community to right the wrongs of past leadership.
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3 comments:
But like you said in an earlier post all of those officals were invited to the School Board meeting and as always none showed up - I would also bet none of these officals are involved in their child(ren) schools, even after they basicly most said involvement was very important
Lets note that some of the Caledonia Board Members have children long, long, long gone from being in school.So they wouldn't be involved in education any longer.Hence the reason some of them really don't care either way if a Feasibility Study is done or not. But, they should care about the education of their grandchildren.Some of them unfortunately think, "Well my kids went through RUSD twenty-five years ago, and they're just fine." They're not realizing that times have changed, educators have changed, the administration has changed, parental values in some communities have also changed.
Now,some of the younger ones like Jonathan Delagrave are very involved in the education of their children.
Either way, the board made a commitment to attend meetings at RUSD, somebody needs to go to uphold that commitment to the Caledonia community.
You're right about some of the trustees not taking this seriously because 1) they do not have children or 2) do not have children in school.
But if you look beyond the potential in education - they SHOULD see that good schools will help Caledonia grow its tax base.
I realize that good schools will not bring in businesses, but businesses WILL NOT settle here if the schools are bad.
The whole "catch-22" thing is frustrating...
There are many of people like me 9with middle-school aged children)
know that our children will not benefit from any action - and prefer to just try to make RUSD tolerable until graduation.
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